Territorial Exchanges and the Two-State Solution for the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy Institute for Policy and Strategy Territorial Exchanges and the Two-State Solution for the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Working Paper Submitted for the Herzliya Conference, January 21-24, 2006 Uzi Arad This paper reflects the opinion of its author only Territorial Exchanges and the Two-State Solution for the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict - August 2005 For the last 70-odd years, the dominant golden rule of efforts to devise a fair and durable settlement of the Jewish-Arab dispute over the Land of Israel (or Palestine, for that matter) has been partitioning the land between the two peoples. True, there were always the maximalists who wanted dominion over the entire land. Among the Arabs and the Palestinians, that position has always been stronger and historically more pronounced; indeed, it persists to varying degrees to this day. Among the Jews, in contrast, the maximalists have always been in the minority and the official position of all authorities has been to pragmatically accept partition. Over the years, the concept of partition, or what would be called today “the two-state solution,” has become the internationally accepted key for the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. Today, most Israelis and the international community back the two-state solution. The necessity – in fact, the inevitability – of partition has drawn its strength from the observable fact that both the Jewish and the Palestinian societies are bent on exercising, and advancing, their distinct identities to the point of national self- determination. Embedded in the partition concept, therefore, is the cultural and ethnic divide between the two peoples. By now, the idea is accepted by most Palestinians; some of them view it as a base for a long-lasting solution to the conflict while for others it represents a transitional stage before the eradication of Israel as a Jewish state. During the last decade, plans for implementing partition have given rise to the mechanism of land swaps, meaning the exchange of sovereignty over territories: swapping of territories with their population; swapping of empty territories; and swapping of empty territories in exchange for populated ones. The concept of land swapping is more accepted than other ideas that have been raised as a solution to demographic problems since it refers to a shift of sovereignty and does not involve the physical transfer of people out of their homes. All land-swap plans use the 1949 armistice lines – which divided the British Mandate territories west of the Jordan River between Israel and the Arabs – as a geographic starting point for negotiations 1 and as a benchmark for each side’s territorial extent. Their appeal lies in demographic developments that have created settlement blocs that are nearly uni-ethnic. Geographically, these blocs are situated in such a way that they could be attached either to Israel or to a Palestinian state. The various land-swap plans proposing a tradeoff of territories aim to increase ethnic homogeneity and to preserve each side's basic territorial reach. In this context, land swaps allow for an exchange of sovereignty over contiguous population blocs – Jewish population blocs in the West Bank proximate to the armistice line, and Arab population blocs west and north of the armistice line. For example, the Gush Etzion and Ariel blocs, and towns in the Jerusalem district, could be exchanged for the towns and surroundings of Umm El- Fahm, Ara’ra’, Barta’a, Qalansuwa, Taybe, Tira and Kafr Kassem. Intrinsic to the partition concept, therefore, is the cultural/ethnic divide. Sometimes referred to as the demographic criterion, it has always been the corollary to the partition formula. That is to say, the guiding principle for partition proposals and the delineation of borders was cultural and ethnic division. Demography was to shape geography. And the procession of peace proposals that have been tabled over the years clearly reflects this reality. In historical terms, the Land of Israel was already partitioned demographically quite early in the game. Transjordan-Palestine, the part of Palestine east of the Jordan River, was given by the British to the Arabs under the rule of the Hijazi Emir Abdullah, and Jewish settlements were subsequently prohibited there. That proved to be easy. While the Jewish leadership in Palestine at the time did present historical claims to Transjordan as well, as an integral part of the Jewish patrimony, there were hardly any Jews residing there at the time and the local population was Arab. The first partition of Palestine was, therefore, easily applied and a new Arab state was established partly over Palestinian land, the Emirate of Transjordan, or as it is known today, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Successive partition plans following the establishment of Transjordan related therefore only to the remaining part of Palestine/ the Land of Israel, west of the Jordan River, populated by both Jews and Arabs. Some of the Jewish towns and cities have been there since time immemorial; others were established with the arrival of 2 immigrants. The existing Arab population in those areas also swelled over the years with the arrival of Arab migrants, many of them attracted by new economic opportunities created by the Jewish settlements. This, however, did not lead to peaceful coexistence. Rather, violent friction ensued, verifying the assertion that was to become a recurring theme for decades to come: The population ought to be separated, ultimately creating two states – one Jewish, Israel, and the other Arab, later to be called Palestine. Interestingly enough, the 1937 Peel Commission even recommended population transfers, since according to its suggested borders, there would be almost the same number of Jews and Arabs in some territories designated for the Jewish state, such as Haifa. At the outset, a recurring pattern emerged. The international community, or whichever power dominated at the time, proposed a partition; the Jews, agonizingly but pragmatically, accepted the principle of partition, while the Arabs and the Palestinians rejected it. Obviously, the reason for the Arab and Palestinian rejection was that accepting partition implied recognizing the legitimacy of Zionism as a national movement eligible for Jewish statehood in the Land of Israel. In the past two decades, this pattern has changed with the gradual acquiescence of the Arabs, and more recently the Palestinians, to accept the two-state formula. As mentioned earlier, not all Palestinians accept the idea as a permanent solution to the conflict. Hamas, for example, perceives the two-state formula as a transitional stage before taking over the entire territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. Since there has never been a Palestinian state, and either armistice lines or arbitrarily drawn lines based on interim agreements have substituted for borders, partition roposals based on land exchanges have gained currency, as a means of facilitating demarcation of the final borders according to demographic principles. In fact, Israel and its Arab neighbors have agreed to land exchanges in the past, notably in the cases of the 1949 armistice agreement and the 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. These land swaps were based on functional considerations: transportation concerns of the 1950s and agricultural concerns in the Arava, respectively. Current discourse is characterized by proposals based on geo-demographic partition, hence making land swaps necessary. 3 The idea of partition received additional support in the wake of the second Intifada, which disillusioned many Israelis regarding previous ideas of integration or other types of condominiums or multinational federated structures, and produced a large majority that views disengagement, separation and partition as the more realistic solution to the conflict. The natural growth rate of the Palestinian population (almost double that of the Jewish population) spurred support on the Palestinian side for a one-state solution – a secular democratic state, dominated by the Palestinians because of their sheer numerical superiority with Jews as a minority. The legitimacy of a Jewish state, so constituted, has been a premise of the international community for almost a hundred years, and Israel will fight to preserve its independence as such. It is precisely to preserve its Jewish and democratic character that Israel is willing to withdraw from more than 90 percent of the West Bank, despite the profound attachment that many Israelis have to these parts of their patrimony and several security interests that warrant keeping those areas. The “Basic” Land Exchange Deal Swapping of territories according to their demographic characteristics provides the two-state solution with long-lasting foundations. The current geo-demographic boundaries apparently will transform the “two states for two peoples” concept to a two states for one people reality. Geographers and experts who deal with demographic issues have warned against that political consequence for many years. The beginning of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s led experts to attach their demographic forecasts to geo-political plans for partition that include exchanges of land and its population. Geographers and demographers, some of them Israeli scholars, have put forward various proposals for land swaps. Prof. Gideon Biger, of Tel Aviv University's Geography

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